


formication

by gummies



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Corruption, Dermatillomania, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:28:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23886700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gummies/pseuds/gummies
Summary: There is a plastic spray bottle under the bathroom sink. The peeling paper logo on the glass cleaner boasts utmost satisfaction, but every time Jane’s used it, the mirror has been left streaked and smudged. One mess traded for another. She has not used the spray bottle in a long time. Some days, she opens the cabinet and sees it, sitting half empty and stagnant. The liquid is beginning to congeal. She looks at the putrid mess inside with something approaching empathy, and wonders idly if she should drink it. If that would be enough to flush out whatever it is that’s lodged itself inside of her.Jane is not completely self-unaware. She knows these are not healthy thoughts to have. That she is not well. What she doesn’t know is what to do about it.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	formication

Jane wakes up not to the feeling of soft blankets, but cool porcelain. 

She’s in the bath. No- she’s in the tub where one would be, if there was water. There is not. She is nude and shivering and the lights are off, casting the tiny room into sweet, sweet darkness.

Jane has always liked to keep the bathroom lights off, ever since she was a child. She feels like a child now, something small and fragile and too stupid to know it. Perhaps she is. Perhaps one day she will wake up not in her bed nor bath, but a chrysalis of skin and paper that spits her out new and whole. Perhaps then the itching will stop.

Jane has always liked to keep the bathroom lights off.

It’s insecurity, at the root of it. Or, no. That’s not quite right. Obsession, maybe. Self-intervention, if she’s being generous. She doesn’t want to look in the mirror. It is a large thing, wall-mounted and unbroken, but dirty. The surface is marred with fingerprints, dust, and tiny little stains from when she leans close and drags her fingers over her skin, searching for any sign of growing pustules and pushing, pushing, pushing until either they pop or the pain brings her back to awareness.

She used to clean the mirror. No. She used to try. She used to try to clean a lot of things. 

There is a plastic spray bottle under the bathroom sink. The peeling paper logo on the glass cleaner boasts utmost satisfaction, but every time Jane’s used it, the mirror has been left streaked and smudged. One mess traded for another. She has not used the spray bottle in a long time. Some days, she opens the cabinet and sees it, sitting half empty and stagnant. The liquid is beginning to congeal. She looks at the putrid mess inside with something approaching empathy, and wonders idly if she should drink it. If that would be enough to flush out whatever it is that’s lodged itself inside of her.

Jane is not completely self-unaware. She knows these are not healthy thoughts to have. That she is not well. What she doesn’t know is what to do about it.

Stumbling from the tub, Jane feels her way across the bathroom. Everything she touches feels different when she cannot see it. The flaking paint on the wall is dry, peeling flesh under her fingers. Wisps of hair, a million crawling legs on her cheeks. She turns the light on quickly.

It isn’t much better.

She looks awful. Her hair is a mess, her teeth are unbrushed, and the bags under her eyes could be used for shopping. Worse- there’s a new pimple. Round and hard, just under her cheekbone.

Any and all hesitations fly out the window as she climbs up onto the counter, struggling to differentiate the spots on the mirror from the ones on her own skin. Her hands are dirty and unwashed, sticky with something. Still, they do the job. One cyst becomes two- three, four, five- as she searches her body, starting with her face and trailing down to her neck, her chest, her shoulders. 

She squeezes them until they bleed, but it’s never enough. There’s always _more,_ more pus, more filth, just out of reach. 

By the time she’s done ravaging her skin, there's blood under her nails. Too much to wash out. She tries anyways, holding her hands under scalding water and biting at the jagged ends until they’re bleeding, too. 

She finds last night’s clothes strewn on the tile floor, and tries not to think of how long it’s been since she last swept. They smell sour, like old sweat. Jane puts them on anyways. All her other clothes are stained, or ripped, or both, and for all its luxury, its _expenses,_ her apartment lacks a washing machine. It came that way. She can still recall her landlord telling her on the tour _you’ll have to buy your own._ Jane has not. She thinks she was trying to, at some point. Before. Before things like money and finances stopped making sense. She was saving up. She was always saving up.

Jane turns the lights off as she leaves the bathroom.

On the way to her kitchen, she passes the staircase. If she cranes her neck just so, she can make out the bottom of the door it leads to.

 _I won’t go in the attic today,_ Jane thinks, and the thought has the feeling of a well-worn but often strayed path.

She lingers for a moment, picking at a scab on her wrist. Waiting. Listening. She isn’t going in, but she needs this. A reminder. That it’s real, in some semblance of the word. That what’s happening to her is not a dream or a delusion or a breakdown. Most of it, at least. 

Then she hears it- a tiny noise, barely enough to register. 

The noise is a voice, soft and lilting, whispering to the tune of some otherworldly melody. A few minutes pass, and another joins it. There are no words to their song, but Jane understands it all the same. _Come back._

Jane blinks, and when she opens her eyes, she’s at the top of the stairs. The door looms in front of her, beckoning. The handle is still mangled, and the metal cuts indents into her palm as she clutches it.

Jerking away as if burned, Jane turns her back on the door and rushes down into the hall, towards the kitchen. The voices don’t stop. They call out to her as she goes, begging, pleading. Promising.

The fridge is just as she remembers it- which is to say, empty. Not actually, but it might as well be. Jane’s stomach growls as she turns over a carton of spoiled milk in her hand, examining an expiration date long past. She fumbles for a box of take-out pressed up against the bottom drawer, only to gag when she opens it. 

The pantry isn’t much better, but she finds a packet of instant ramen tucked behind some empty cereal boxes. She rips off the plastic and eats it dry, crouched on the floor with her back to the stove. It tastes like cardboard, but she got as far as taking out a pot before she remembered what the finished product would look like- long and pale and bloated, like a hundred tangled worms. Jane closes her eyes while she eats.

Without work or faith to fill her schedule and mind, Jane has found herself with few obligations. Most days, she does nothing but sit on her couch and stare out the window, tapping her foot to the horrible chorus in her attic. Sometimes she leaves. She can never stay away for long. The song becomes quieter, the farther away she gets. It should be a relief. Instead, it's a terror. The voices fade, and her mind feels _empty_ without them. Like the comb of an abandoned beehive, dry and still. Incomplete, unwhole.

Alone.

There was a time when she did not feel like this. It is another thing Jane knows, despite how untrue it seems. Normal people do not feel like this. She knows. She knows.

She sees people, sometimes, when she looks out through the window. No one she recognises. Not that that’s saying much. All her friends have left her. Were they normal people? Is that why they had to cut her out of their lives like a weed? To stop her from infecting them, digging her roots into their bodies and dragging them down into the rot with her?

Today, Jane stays inside. The night’s fog has given way to clear skies, and the sunlight is blinding. She hates how bright it is when she steps out, how if she looks down she can see every spec of grime on herself, every loose hair, every pore. So she shutters the blinds and settles in, like a tick on a dog’s back.

There is something rotten at her core, Jane thinks. A spoiling in her chest. It aches and pulses, itches and stings. She can even feel it spreading, sometimes, if she pays very close attention. Jane wonders how long it will be before the decay reaches her lungs.

Above her, the hive sings.

**Author's Note:**

> i've been working on a few things that've yet to be finished, but i didn't want to go a month without posting anything, so i whammed out something short for my girl jane. hope it made you feel as itchy as i did while writing it!


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